Energy benchmarking law goes from cities to county
Fierce Energy, April 30, 2014Montgomery County, Maryland, has become the first county in the country to pass an energy benchmarking law, which requires commercial building owners to track and report the facility’s energy use. Nine major cities — Austin, Boston, Chicago, the District of Columbia, Minneapolis, New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Seattle — have, thus far, enacted similar laws to cut energy waste, lower utility bills, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Montgomery County’s new law was part of a package of nine energy bills and unanimously passed to require the annual benchmarking of energy use in county-owned nonresidential buildings with an initial deadline of June 1, 2015; the benchmarking of privately owned nonresidential buildings of 250,000 or more square feet by December 1, 2016; and the benchmarking of private nonresidential buildings of 50,000 to 250,000 square feet by December 1, 2017.